//online content//Spring 2017

Dr. Andrew Porwancher (above) addressed Columbia students at an event hosted by The Current on February 19th, 2016. Photo courtesy of Avi Schwarzschild.

Dr. Andrew Porwancher, a core faculty member of the Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage at the Oklahoma University, is staking his career on the radical claim that Alexander Hamilton was Jewish. At an event last month hosted by The Current and co-sponsored by the Student Governing Board, the Alexander Hamilton Society, and the Columbia Political Union, Dr. Porwancher explained the thesis of his book-in-progress on this topic.

The entire premise of this talk raises an obvious question: why has no other historian discovered this essential part of Hamilton’s background in the 200 years since the founding father’s death? Dr. Porwancher contends that most contemporary Hamilton historians base their information about his childhood on primary source research done by their predecessors, who never thoroughly read the Danish legal documents that indicate Hamilton’s Jewishness. Much of Dr. Porwancher’s thesis is predicated upon evidence long ignored by historians, gathered from the various Caribbean islands where Hamilton spent his childhood years. Since no historian has examined these documents extensively in their original language or context, Dr. Porwancher believes that they have been blind to key information about Hamilton scattered throughout archives the Caribbean and Europe.

Dr. Porwancher’s theory begins with Hamilton’s mother, Rachel. On the Caribbean island of St. Croix, she met and married Johann Michael Levine, whom Hamilton’s grandson later referred to as a wealthy Danish Jew. However, other historians have assumed Levine was not Jewish, since he is not identified as a Jew in the Danish legal records on St. Croix. However, Dr. Porwancher discounts this absence as evidence, as we know for a fact that there were several Jews on the island and only one of them was identified as such in the records. Further, Levine was a merchant, a traditionally Jewish occupation at the time, with a presumably Jewish last name.

According to Danish law that also applied to the colonies, couples were only allowed to get married if both partners were of the same religion. Thus, in order for Rachel to marry Johann, the law required she convert to Judaism. Their son, Alexander’s half-brother, was not listed on the island’s baptismal records, indicating that he was likely not baptized as an infant, advancing the argument that they lived their married lives as Jews. Even though their marriage did not last, Jewish law dictates that conversions are irreversible. Based on this law, Rachel was still considered Jewish when she gave birth to Alexander Hamilton.

After her marriage with Levine collapsed, Rachel moved to Nevis and met James Hamilton, the Scotsman who fathered Alexander. Though James Hamilton was Christian, Dr. Porwancher theorizes that this did not prevent Rachel from raising Alexander as a Jew. Like his half-brother, Alexander Hamilton’s name does not appear on the Nevis baptismal records. Most Hamilton biographers point out that he attended a Jewish school in Nevis, where he learned the Ten Commandments in the original Hebrew. The common explanation for this is that as a child born out of wedlock, Alexander would not have been able to attend a Christian school, and would only be allowed to attend school along with similar societal outcasts. However, Dr. Porwancher’s research has revealed that children in circumstances similar to Alexander’s were indeed baptized on the islands and accepted into Anglican schools. He also questions the assumption that a Jewish school would be more welcoming to an illegitimate Christian child than a Christian school, as Jewish schools have a history of being insular and exclusive, not cosmopolitan centers open to all. The only possible explanation for Alexander’s presence in such a school is that his mother was purposefully exposing him to Judaism. After his mother’s death (notably, she was not buried in the church cemetery), Hamilton made his way to New York City. Though he certainly presented himself as Christian from this point onward, he was known for his general apathy towards Christianity. He famously bought a pew for his wife at Trinity Church but did not buy one for himself. Further, he neither attended church nor received communion.

More than any other founding father, Hamilton actively worked to promote the welfare of American Jewry. As a lawyer, he defended Jews; as a politician, he incorporated Jewish ideas into America’s financial system; as a Columbia alumnus, he worked to get a rabbi––Rabbi Gershom Seixas––a position on Columbia’s board of trustees, the first Jew to hold such a role at an American university. In one of Hamilton’s most famous legal cases, he worked with Aaron Burr to defend a Jewish merchant, Louis Le Guen, against fraud accusations. Hamilton’s passionate response to anti-Semitic statements in the courtroom solidified his radical acceptance of Jews and Judaism. He delivered a three-hour oration on the history of the Jewish people and their persecution, ultimately arguing that in America, Jew and Gentile stand equally before the law. To Dr. Porwancher, this public support of Jewish rights is further evidence of his theory.

Dr. Porwancher closed the evening by drawing compelling parallels between the story of Hamilton and the history of the Jews. Both were wanderers in search of promised land and came to New York in search of a new life. Both turned to trade, commerce, and finance while their marginality kept them out of the agrarian elite.

Hamilton’s Jewishness definitely makes for an interesting conversation of hypotheticals, but as one audience member inquired during the Q&A portion of the lecture, “Why should we care?” Is Hamilton’s Jewish past anything more than a fun fact about this founding father? In response, Dr. Porwancher stated that this aspect of Hamilton’s past not only explains his role in promoting American Jewish causes during his later years, but also contextualizes his specific multicultural vision for the United States. Hamilton’s vision for America was far more egalitarian and cosmopolitan than that of Jefferson or the other founding fathers precisely because of his humble beginnings on the fringes of society. Not only was he a bastard orphan from the Caribbean, but he was also born and raised a member of a historically marginalized faith. This must have contributed to his particular vision for American democracy.

As Dr. Porwancher puts it: “Jefferson’s words in the Declaration may have given birth to the country, but it was in Hamilton’s America where an orphan from the Caribbean could become Secretary of the Treasury. It is in Hamilton’s America where American Jews for the first time in modern history could be recognized as full-fledged citizens.”

Without a time machine, we will never know for certain whether Hamilton was born and raised a Jew. But what we do know for certain is that without him, the position of Jews in early America would not have been the same.

Estie Berkowitz is a sophomore in Columbia College. She can be reached at ​arb2239@columbia.edu.